Many videogames offer an online multiplayer mode in addition to a storyline mode. The commercial success of many videogames can be attributable, to some degree, on the multiplayer offering of the videogame. Online multiplayer games have become so popular that some games have communities as large as several million players. With any large community, especially anonymous online communities, there exists a greater propensity for some players to engage in anti-social behavior, unsportsmanlike conduct, or cheating. These sorts of players can detract from the experience of normal players and in the aggregate can greatly diminish enjoyment of a game. In order to address these negative players and provide an enjoyable multiplayer experience for all players, developers often maintain an administrative staff to manage the online community through the investigation of complaints, appeals, and tracking of cheaters or other suspect players. Community management is an extremely complicated and labor intensive task. Providing this type of manual community management presents an extremely large overhead cost to developers that must be maintained well after the initial purchase of the game.
In addition to cost, manual community management can be ineffective with the large volume of games occurring around the clock, addressing complaints and appeals can be not only extremely costly, but also time intensive such that delays can also detract from the multiplayer experience with players having to wait while staff investigate appeals of false accusations. However, cost and speed are not the only factors to be considered, fairness is also a driving force in any community management system and thus the determinations and punishments should be clear to all users and fairly enforced. Finally, as in any complex system such as a multiplayer game, there is great vulnerability for exploitation and abuses may not all be identified at the onset; the system should therefore be flexible in its ability to identify and deal with new types of cheating. Thus, an effective community management system must balance all four considerations of cost, time efficiency, fairness, and flexibility.